Slashdot Mirror
World's First BTX Mini-PC
CTZ writes "We have direct information from CES 2005 show floor that covers Shuttle's first BTX Mini-PC. It's also the world's first BTX system ever displayed. "Shuttle also had a rather sizable booth with an entire line of their products displayed, as it can be seen from the images throughout this article. Perhaps the most important interesting product they had on the show floor was the world's first XPC based on Intel's BTX standard. Shuttle is looking to make the system affordable, so they have decided to use steel for the chassis instead of aluminum. According to Shuttle, this will bring the cost of the XPC system down by $130.00. The only downside, as some may perceive it, is that the BTX XPC system will be 1" wider than regular XPCs, but regardless, you can expect the same quality from Shuttle."
Throughout the article? Either you are exaggerating beyond the normal limits of exaggeration or I am missing something here... I see exactly TWO images. One of a LCD panel and one of a square box that has some sort of tray (DVDRW/CDRW?). Woohoo!
Let's not forget that the "article" is little more than a press release about a product that saves you $130! Saves me $130 from what? $1000? $2000? $more? Let's make sure that the editors do some weeding out of blatant advertising of crap next time.
This "article" didn't tell me much about the product, really didn't like anywhere but to other advertisements, and left me guessing.
Thanks for posting this to the main page. I really appreciate it.
Won't steel add weight to the thing?
Also, the one and only experience I've had with Shuttles was when the one we had had its power supply fail. Hardly a good statistical sampling, but it was fairly new, so I personally have a negative view of Shuttle quality, but I may be in the minority on that one.
Please stay tuned for more interesting coverage of the show floor...
...Because we know it couldn't be less interesting than this report.
This post hasn't even been up 10 minutes and it's timing out for me. Anyone care to post a mirror?
Given the relative prices of aluminum and steel, I'm picturing something the size of my desk! How can aluminum vs. steel construction represent a price difference of over $100?
Everybody's a libertarian 'till their neighbour's becomes a crack house.
One class of products seen on the floor at CES that has generated a lot of interest is the SEX (Slashdot-Effect eXterminator) that promises to end the near instantaneous meltdown caused by the DDoS^H^H^H^H heavy loads placed upon sites linked to by that "News for Nerds" site.
"See that big hole in the side there?" asks Ned Farblestrom of BlackHole Technologies, pointing to a 3/4 inch hole in the side of the case. "That's where we hook up a big fat pipe to handle the load. Those Slashdotters won't be able to fill that up!"
You don't use science to show that you're right, you use science to become right.
MirrorDot.org has a mirror up, but it's pretty slow right now. Get it while you can.
--
It works.
Free Flat Screens | Free iPod Photo
infested with jello like fishes no melotron wishes
here's an Anandtech article on BTX:-7 6
http://www.anandtech.com/showdoc.html?i=18
Again, AnandTech saves the day
i =2317&p=15
i =2317&p=6
i =2317&p=5
BTX: http://www.anandtech.com/tradeshows/showdoc.aspx?
Shuttle: http://www.anandtech.com/tradeshows/showdoc.aspx?
More Shuttle: http://www.anandtech.com/tradeshows/showdoc.aspx?
God forbid CTX actually covered the show instead of just rewriting press releases...
Shuttle is looking to make the system affordable, so they have decided to use steel for the chassis instead of aluminum. According to Shuttle, this will bring the cost of the XPC system down by $130.00.
Can someone explain to me how in the hell this can be so? Even with a 3x markup, that's $43. There is absolutely no way that a switch to steel can save that much money. $10 maybe, but not $130. Someone is pissing on our backs and telling us it's raining.
"Eve of Destruction", it's not just for old hippies anymore...
That's Slashvertising plain and simple.
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
Ok, the article is hardly loading for me.. so here are some mirrors of the 2 images from this article and some other images from some other article about the Shuttle stand (I forget where that was, thanks to the original site whoever it was).
Link
Link
and from the other article...
Link
Link
Link
Link
Link
Steel is stronger so maybe they could use less, and not add too much weight. Of course every ounce they add will cost someone in shipping.
Anyone know why switching to steel saves so much $?
"A witty saying proves nothing." ~Voltaire
"d'Oh!" ~Homer
Is it me, or are not these so called "small form factor" machines getting bigger and bigger? To the point that they take up as much room, if not more, as compared to what we used to call a "medium tower case"? Hmmm??
Coral Cache of the link
Also note, in other small form-factor PC news, that UK co Armari are now shipping the iwill zmaxdp dual-opteron SFF PC:
overview
customise
In North America alone, Shuttle retails around 10,000 XPC systems per month and now they are getting a demand from consumers throughout the world. Because of the demand, Shuttle has decided to retail their XPC systems to the European and Brazilian markets.
I've had a Shuttle system on my desk for the last two and a half years, and I'm in the UK.
I always liked the idea and looks, but dislike the noise - I don't know how more recent models compare (I have an SB51G) and would be interested to, err, hear...
Cheers,
Ian
Hey Look! I'm playing Duke Nukem Forever on my BTX form factor PC. Thanks to 3DRealms and Intel for making this possible...
Quality? From SHUTTLE? These are the guys who send wave after wave of CPU destroying VRMs on their boards. 6 months, dead CPU...
When it's available in Canada, and the pirates at Canada Computers jack up the prices?
Actually, it's just copied and pasted from the article.
Writing article summaries that read well is difficult. Even so, it'd be nice if people tried to get creative instead of just copying and pasting from the article verbatim.
There is no reasonable defense against an idiot with an agenda
:wq
Is there a sudden crash in the worldwide availabilty of desk space? Especially given that most non slaves get flat screens now?
First off I can see tremendous fragility problems with monkeying with the screen angle and flopping the screen and the entire computer onto the desk, or worse, off the desk.
I guess you'll see these soon on every desk in every TV show soon but in terms of reality it doesn't really answer much of a need.
* Hey, you should see my new BTX Mini-PC ... its really cool!
# Cool, huh? Whats it look like?
* Like a little grey box
# Oh yeah, that really cool
Crap, I read that wrong. A BMX Mini PC sounded really interresting.
"God fights on the side with the best artillery." - Napoleon, Marshal of France - speaking truth to power
..compatible are Shuttle boxes, in general? Does ACPI work?
I'm surprised that using steel instead of aluminum would cut $130 off the price. Aluminum only costs about $0.83/lb. Does it cost a lot to shape or something? I'd expect the harder steel to cost more to work.
I'm an engineer specialized in manufacturing and I've done some work recently sourcing steel for stampings. Steel prices, along with other raw materials, have gone through the roof in the last year or so largely due to demand from China. (I was there recently and you cannot believe the amount of construction going on unless you see it. Absolutely amazing.) As of a month ago, I was getting quotes on steel that were generally in the range of $0.45-$0.57/lb depending on the alloy you wanted and where you needed it. (this is in North America) If you want forgings or something shaped, that will add to the cost. On a weight basis the steel can't cost more than $15-25 (and that's generous) given the amount of material in a typical case.
$130 seems like a lot just for materials savings unless they were using unusual alloys or really getting ripped off on the labor. Steel is actually pretty easy to work with, often easier than aluminum in my experience. Aluminum is so soft you often have to be careful with coolants and cutting speeds. There are structural considerations sometimes too. Aluminum requires different amounts of material for the same structural strength. But the difference isn't exactly night and day. Frankly I'm having a hard time figuring out where $130 in material savings would come from since the amount of material is so small.
From this article:m i_m3165/is _n9_v24/ai_6987079 ... ... ...
http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/
One drawback--the inability to spotweld aluminum -- is near a solution. Alcan International Ltd. assures that it soon will release a sheet-aluminum bonding material, which company officials say has achieved "commercially acceptable levels of performance" for structures that are equal to steel in stiffness, strength and crashworthiness.
But automakers don't shy away from the versatile material because of past failures. "With aluminum -- like anything else -- anytime you make changes you have some problems," says Richard V. Stumph, director of engineering for GM's Central Foundry Div. "We haven't shied away from it because of problems, but because of economic considerations. There's retooling, and aluminum has different mechanical properties than the materials it's displacing," all of which requires more engineering study, producing higher costs.
At first I read the summary as: this will bring the cost of the XPC system down to $130.00.
I was excited at first, but then I realized that I misread it... I still have hope that I'll be able to get a small form factor PC for a reasonable price. Not today, I guess.
Wanted: witty unique signature. Must be willing to relocate.
I'm confused by the product http://de.shuttle.com/en/desktopdefault.aspx/tabid -72/170_read-10151/:
Mainboard
Shuttle FB86, Shuttle form factor, proprietary design for SB86i
AFAIK, the term "BTX" applies just as much to the enclosure as to the motherboard. If either is not BTX-compliant, then the machine can't be marketed as such.
Specs
The monitor will be tainted with a special coating
I'm scared.
Especially when you consider this is a "small form factor" computer. The ammounts of aluminum going into it in the first place were very small. Personally I'd find $10 to be a stretch.
It's strange that prices of end products haven't gone through the roof yet.
It shouldn't surprise you so much. A lot of firms have long term contracts to provide materials at a fixed price. In some cases the market is so competitive that they can't raise prices even if the firm was able to. Hence the firm you sell that copper wire to may be unable to pass on the cost increases to their customers. I've been working with some auto suppliers that are absolutely taking a bath because they can't pass on the increases in materials cost.
i've had a shuttle knockoff for 1.5 years (ams gbox). when i first purchased it i really liked the small factor of it all until i needed to upgrade the memmory and agp video card... of course the memmory in slot 2 would be interescting a large agp card. on top of all this is the amount of heat my p4 2.6ht processor creates inside. the only direction for cpu air exhaust to go was up, directly onto the hard drive cage. over time i believe it led to the failure in my system partition. now i'm building a watercooled case in a roomy mid tower where everything will have plenty room to breathe. all in all the form factor is great, but as i see it the components inside will start to suffer over time more so than a standard well thought out tower.
Maybe it has nothing to do with the material costs, and everything to do with the actual production of the case?
We have deployed about 100 various model Shuttle PCs throughout our company over the last 2 years. So far we have only had one shuttle related hardware failure in the form of flakey video on the mb. OTOH, we have had numerous failures in the far fewer Dells we have deployed. All have been handled under warantee just fine.
So call me a shuttle fanboy -- I can take it. As soon as they offer a flex-ATX that takes the 64-bit AMD athlon AND has support for PCI-express, I'll upgrade the gaming box.
Some points have been raised that BTX is a more bloated form factor than the traditional shuttle flex-ATX that we've been used to, and I'd agree. I think that the increase in size is due to a couple things:
When I first started building PCs some 4 years ago, I became used to having to unravel driver and moboard firmware issues as part of the job. With each of my shuttles -- each sporting a different OS -- I've had zero issues. Linux support has been great (I've only tried Fedora Core, RedHat9 and Suse, so the sample size ain't all that large, admittedly).
For me, the biggest plusses of XPCs are that they have fewer fans (and are, hence, more quiet), are very portable, and where I used to have one biga$$ tower I can have three shuttles. If I were putting together a cluster/server farm, they'd probably be a good choice, too, because I could cram lots of them into a small space.
SFFs are getting a lot more exposure, and I think that's a good thing. That Shuttle is emerging into the BTX space is also a good thing, imho.
.. pa-ra-bo-la, pa-ra-bo-la, 2 pi R, 2 pi R, where's your latus rectum, where's your latus rectum, 2 pi R
I like to read about hot new products, so long as they're breaking ground in some unique way.
Bush was a load Barbara should've swallowed.
I picked up a Gateway 700GR system a few months back to replace another box and its a BTX based system. I wish more BTX stuff would hit as I'd like to replace this case with somthing nicer... http://support.gateway.com/s/PC/R/3726/3726nv.shtm l
For example, Mcmaster-Carr is quoting $215.13 for a 4'x 4' sheet of .019 1100 aluminum. A 4x4 sheet of .019 Galvanized carbon steel goes for $31.17. That's about 1/7th the cost of aluminum.
Aren't we waiting a long time for all this new technology to come out? I've been waiting to a BTX FF motherboard, socket 939 and with PCI-E on it. I'm starting to wonder if I won't be waiting 'till 2007 to be able to buy one. Is it just me, or all these nice and new things are just taking forever to show up?
///<sig
I have two Shuttles stacked where I used to have 1 ATX machine before.
In all honestly I want some of what you are smoking.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
The article refers to the newest line of Shuttle cases that are 99.99% BTX compliant, the p-series. Your link is to the slightly older i-series.
The only difference I think is that the shuttle cases don't have a true intake in the front, but have a kind of gill around the front edge.
There are probably a few other issues. I certainly wouldn't count on plopping in any other micro or pico BTX board into the Shuttle case in the near future. Not that it looks like you have to worry about a huge selection any time soon.
in my 12 years of system building i have to ask WHEN THE HELL did all onboard components become "TRENDY" i mean come on used too if it had onboard sound and network id Cringe.
/end rant
Shit 7 years ago if you wanted all the crap rolled up into one any compaq or packardbell would fit the bill,
Dimension 5000 is already for sale as a BTX system. Check out the product views and look at the motherboard.